Concept

Client focus
Prominence Pty Ltd
ABN 18 105 997 715

Introduction
Everyone knows who the client is, dont they?
It is interesting that when asked who the client is, personnel within a single
workgroup undertaking the same functional tasks will often provide different answers.
Other personnel within certain types of organisations or business unit will say they
dont have a client.
Why is the identification of the client important?

Why is client focus important?

Most client-facing personnel such as those in sales and customer support roles can
easily identify their client constituency and have processes and plans to engage and
manage them. These types of organisational departments often have sophisticated
customer relationship management (CRM) tools and methodologies to manage
expectations.
They develop these tools and processes for many reasons including:
oo the fact that it is easier to exceed client expectations if you have set or managed
those expectations;
oo that good communications and management mean the client and its needs are
understood such that other services (sales) can be offered, improved or
expanded; and
oo that discovering and dealing with a clients problem at its inception (proactive) is
better than resolving what may be a larger issue later (reactive).
What some organisations fail to grasp is that these reasons are applicable to all parts
of the organisation not just sales and support.
The difficulty sometimes is for each part of the organisation to identify who their
client is. Understanding that every part of the organisation has a client base and
identifying who the client (or clients) is allows the development of better processes,
management practices and, most importantly the development of a customer service
culture.

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Concept: Client focus

Confidential 2008 Prominence Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.

Identifying clients
Client identification allows focus in strategy development and motivation for quality
of service. This is hampered where:
oo personnel perceive that there is no client; or
oo the perceived client is too far removed from the work done by personnel.
There are often difficulties in identifying the client when:
oo workers are in the public sector (and sometimes not-for-profit sector)
particularly in areas without public contact; and/or
oo workers are in a part of the organisation whose prime purpose is to service other
parts of the same organisation (for example IT support and Corporate Services)
are often too far removed from the external clients to develop a sense of client
focus.
Large organisations can have very complex client constituencies with different
departments having different clients. The complexity of some organisations means
that a network of internal and external clients results from the internally (service
provision) focused and externally focussed parts of the organisation.
Organisational external client constituency
An organisation will have a collective constituency that it services external to
itself. This is the traditional understanding of client and while the fringes or
extent of the constituency may be hard to define the concept is generally
understood.

In large organisations this broad constituency may be divided up amongst

different departments or other sub-entities in the organisation. Each of these
may have specific external clients.

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Concept: Client focus

Confidential 2008 Prominence Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.

Specific external clients

Sometimes the whole organisation has the same client constituency but different
parts of the organisation might have different client segments within the whole
client constituency. These segments may be discrete or overlapping but can
usually be defined by such things as the services/products they use, geographic
location or demographic.

Sometimes there may be different levels of external client. For example there
may be intermediary organisations that retail or otherwise act as the conduits
for the organisations products or services.

Whatever the combinations of external clients that exist they are usually well
identified and clearly understood as clients. These clients and the interactions
with them are usually amongst the best measured and planned aspects of the
organisation.

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Concept: Client focus

Confidential 2008 Prominence Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.

Internal clients
Some parts of organisations never deal with external clients instead they service
other internal clients. By serving the internal clients well the external client
constituency is also served by supporting and enabling the other parts of the
organisation that directly serve the external clients.

Those parts of the organisation that have purely internal clients often have the
most problems with client focus. They are a long way from the constituency
that is clearly identified as clients and therefore the most visible, measured and
recognised parts of the organisation. Their work may be devalued by some parts
of the organisation because they do not interact with the real clients.
Furthermore they may not view the other parts of the organisation they service
as clients and discard the concept of client focus as not relevant to them.
Immediate and ultimate clients
To add some cohesion to an organisations approach to client focus it is
sometimes useful to separate the client into ultimate client and immediate client.
The ultimate client is typically the focus of the whole organisation such as the
people who buy the organisations products or services.
The immediate client is typically the focus of a part of an organisation in
serving this client the ultimate client is served.
Internal service providers such as an IT Department might see their immediate
client as the other divisions and personnel of the organisation.
A division may have a particular external immediate client that is not the
ultimate client (an example may be resellers of the organisations products or
services) where serving the immediate client serves the ultimate client indirectly.

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Concept: Client focus

Confidential 2008 Prominence Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.

Critical issues
Client focus is the clear identification of client bodies (whether internal, external,
single or multiple) and an understanding of how those bodies are best served. Clearly
determining how client focus is to be defined and managed can add context to
strategies, plans and processes. By then having a better focus for product and services
at all levels of the organisation, a client focus culture can be developed and better
quality outcomes can be achieved.
Critical issues:
oo understanding that a client focus approach is applicable to all levels of the
organisation;
oo the ability to clearly identify immediate and ultimate clients for individuals,
divisions and the organisation as a whole;
oo placing strategies, plans, processes and individual behaviour within the context
of client focus; and
oo developing a client focus culture at all levels of the organisation.
Prominence offers consultancy services to organisations that range from strategic
advice to process and knowledge management to document production
investigations. Further information regarding Prominence and other concept
documents can be obtained using the contact details below.

Other Prominence documents:

Profile: Business process investigation

Profile: Document production investigation
Business process investigation: areas of expertise and methodologies
Document production investigation: areas of expertise and methodologies
Concept: Change management
Concept: Targeted surveys and information gathering
Concept: Document production environment design
Concept: The paperless office?
Concept: Business processes: reengineer or improve?
Concept: Knowledge management
Concept: Managing processes
Concept: Processes, standards, benchmarks and best practices
Concept: Organisational measurement
Concept: Flexible processes
Concept: Useability

Prominence

Pty Ltd

ABN 18 105 997 715

Quality
Endorsed
Company
ISO 9001:2000

PO Box 66 Taigum Q 4018

Phone: (07) 3865 8773
www.ProminenceConsulting.com.au
enquiries@ProminenceConsulting.com.au

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